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Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching msa_s1048_1_and_10-0661 Enlarge and print image (357K)  Notes  Transcribe << PREVIOUS NEXT >> |
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Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching msa_s1048_1_and_10-0661 Enlarge and print image (357K)  Notes  Transcribe << PREVIOUS NEXT >> |
| Now they propose to start a boycott campaign on the Baltimore merchants; this will stir up more strife and only cause the honest-to-goodness Christians to condemn them the more. The people of Baltimore^ will not boycott Eastern Shore products, which are many. They are too intelligent and know that such a practice would not be according to Christ's teachings. I should think-the people of the Shore (or the press, rather) would declare an armistice on the matter and get back to Christ's teachings, which would make us all happy. Severn, Md., Dec. 14. R. F. Redmh.es. Well, This Eastern Shoreman Is No Slouch With The Poison Pen To the Editor of The Evening Sun—Sir: I've read this "Eastern Shore Kultur" stuff of Henry Mencken's and it really makes me wonder how anyone at all familiar with the way old "Hen" has always had of dipping his pen into the cesspool of his own soul and writing his heart out could ever have taken any sort of offense at that effiusion of his. What a prize lyncher Henry would make, particularly gifted as he is for staying in the background and stirring the other fellow on to desperate deeds (like boycotting The Sun, for instance). If this man ever gets saved, what a Billy Sunday he would make! The old "Hen" still knows how to scratch in the dunghill for the dollar. Anybody who will take the time to rummage through old Noah Webster's rubbish heap for stuff with which to adorn his high-browish righteousness, take a good drink of "bootleg" and start in to "smear" his neighbors can win more attention and coin more coin than a whole Sermon on the Mount over a world-wide "hook-up." You see, when judged against the background of our idealistic ways our neighbors are all such a lot of impossible morons—mental, ) moral and spiritual—they need a good "cussin'," and we are perfectly willing to pay such a good "cusser" as Henry good money to do it. For culture, my dear brethren, per ) Henry's brand is simply the ability to *cuss" without using regular "swear ¦words," to libel everybody in general and nobody in particular (thus dodging the courts), and to get a spell of perfectly human biliousness passed off for pure I righteousness and collect the "kale" for it. And anybody who loves Methodist preachers, prohibition, the klan and an old-fashioned revival meeting the ardent way Henry does-is apt to have a spell of biliousness most any time these days. Which leads me to hope that the Mencken brand of "larnin" and "kultur" will not become epidemic over here on the Eastern Shore. Now, we may, "once in a blue moon," lynch a poor Negro; but, then, we would give ourselves to the daily diversion of lynching each other. George F. Newton. Preston, Md., Dec. 11. |